Page 8 of Dark Sun (Wicked Lovely 6)

“Remember that later when your own heart feels shattered,” she whispered. “Hewas always destined to find love with a mortal. It is what his kind does.It is what he was fated to do.” She paused and offered a sad smile. “It is whatyourkind does. Mortals or othergancanaghs. There is no other choice for you.”

Urian stared up at her, mouth open, but he could only manage a single word: “What?”

Sorcha stepped back and slid into the shape of a dragon, which was the same as saying “I’m done with words and answers.” Iridescent scales the size of platters covered a body that was massive and muscled. Spines that looked like triangular plates jutted up from her skull like a purple mohawk. Daintily, she tossed her head toward her back, directing him.

“I haven’t ridden in—”

“Grrrr,” the High Queen, currently reptilian in shape, answered.

“As you wish,” Urian whispered.

And with more than a shade of trepidation, Urian stepped onto her outstretched clawed hand and braced himself as she dumped him on her back. He hadn’t expected to fit as well as he had as a child, but magic adjusted for things in ways that weren’t always logical—even when that magic belonged to the embodiment of logic.

As the High Queen’s immense wings began to flap and they took flight, he was smiling in a way that he hadn’t done in far, far too long.

ChapterFour

Urian

Later, as he readied himself to leave Faerie, Urian pondered briefly that he’d left the building where the Summer Court lived without any injuries or issues. He wasn’t going to admit that he was impressed that Aislinn had chosen to save the fallen fey rather than attack Urian to exact vengeance. He suspected that he’d have chosen differently.

There was no one—other than the High Queen and his sister Elena —he’d cared for enough to choose to help them. Not since his mother had died. Not since he’d realized what he was.

A drug.

There were nicer words, but the reality of life as a halfling was that the faery world would be deadly to him unless he established himself as a threat—and his time with humanity was dangerous in other ways. His touch was poisonous. And like any poison, he’d eventually kill.

Had killed, he mentally corrected himself.

When he was unaware of what he was, of the heritage dear old dad had left him, he’d accidentally killed a girl. They were at a party--kissing, touching--and a few weeks later, she started to wither. No doctor knew why she died. Urian hadn’t known either. Then. After a few more deaths, and he’d noticed the pattern: His kisses were fatal.

But what life was there, then, spent around mortals? What future was there when one lived for literal centuries? He needed to be accepted within the world of the fey, but the more he’d considered it the more he realized thatacceptancewasn’t enough.

His fatherowedhim.

His sister, Elena Foy, had not been cursed with this poisonous skin. Her only faery heritage was that she aged more slowly than mortals, and of course, she could see them. She’d raised her daughter—Urian’s niece, Moira—and then her granddaughter, the current Summer Queen. They were all more mortal than fey, despite the blood running in their veins.

Urian was unusual in that he was more fae than mortal. He’d aged even more slowly, and his sister, though only a year older than him in physical years, was a grandmother while Urian was still the emotional equivalent of a twenty-something year old mortal.

Iron didn’t injure him as it did most fey—but that was because he was destined to a king. It was his first inclination of the destiny that awaited him. Admittedly, halflings were always peculiar creatures, sometimes more fey and sometimes more mortal. Urian was almost entirely fey. In his look. In his traits. He was everything his father was, and he hated himself for it far too often.

Hated Irial for it.

So Urian had stayed hidden. He’d been living a life of gloved hands and celibacy for years at a time. The occasional halfling, often unbeknownst to themselves, or solitary faery was his only opportunity for the one thing he craved above almost all others: affection, touch, hunger.

He deserved more—and knowing that his damnable father was happy with some other mortalanda faery too? That was like vinegar in Urian’s mouth that he couldn’t escape. Urian’s mother died waiting for Irial. Urian was left unable to find what he needed—what most faeries and mortals craved—thanks to this cursed heritage.

Shouldn’t he have something to ease his losses?

Shouldn’t he be happy?

He stepped back into the mortal world. “Why shouldIhide in the shadows? Blood of two courts. Abandoned by both.”

Urian waited for the wild creature that shaped itself into a car as it approached. His car-friend-creature rarely ventured far into Faerie, but the creature was there, waiting as ever, when he stepped back into the mortal world. The creature, his only lifelong friend, carried him into the dark night. The car didn’t speak, but the currently car-shaped creature was his companion, the one he spoke to freely and without fear of retribution.

The car drove, and eventually Urian let himself sleep. The distance to the desert where he was living was four days—unless he dropped into Faerie and then back out on the other side as he had done.

His auntie, as the eldest living faery called herself, allowed him unfettered access to Faerie although the veil was technically closed. Urian was grateful for the exception that his auntie had allowed him.

---